No accountability for the long-delayed Eglinton Crosstown rail line

Twelve years later, we still have no idea when the Eglinton Crosstown light rail line might be opening. 

Begun in 2011, the project, which runs east-west through mid-town Toronto, was originally supposed to have been completed in 2020, which would have been bad enough, given that European and Asian cities seem to be able to build subway and rail lines within just a few years. Then it was 2021. Then 2022. 

A final decision on the opening was supposed to have been announced by the end of the summer of 2023. But all we actually got was an admission that "we're not there yet", and no specific time frame. So, it could be 2024. Or 2025. Or not. According to Metrolinx's statement, "pretty much" all of the line and its stations are now built, but testing and commissioning is producing various "faults and issues" which will take an "unpredictable" time to fix. Hmm. 

How can a project of this magnitude, millions of dollars over budget, have quite so little accountability? Phil Verster, the CEO of Metrolinx, the guy in charge of all this embarrassment, has just had his contract extended. Go figure.

Mayor Olivia Chow met the "news" with a "big sigh", but no-one seems unduly perturbed by this complete lack of culpability and dereliction of duty. Somehow, I can't imagine such equanimity in Tokyo or Stockholm. But then, in Tokyo or Stockholm, the rail line would have been opened years ago...

Notwithstanding clause being abused yet again

Pretty much any time the notwithstanding clause is used, you know it is being used for something bad. By definition, the clause is not used until a government has been closed down by the courts in its pursuit of something that is demonstrably illegal or unconstitutional.

The latest threat to use the Canadian Constitution's notwithstanding clause comes from Scott Moe's Saskatchewan government (yes, another Conservative government), as he looks to ram home his party's obsession with not allowing schools to use kids' preferred names and pronouns without parental permission. 

And the reason he needs to use the notwithstanding clause? Because Saskatchewan's Court of the King's Bench has paused his plan on the grounds that it may cause irreparable harm to some of its most vulnerable young people. But Moe doesn't care about details like that: he has a view and a vision and he thinks it is right (or at least a vote-catcher), regardless of what anyone else thinks.

Moe calls the court decision "judicial overreach" (er, no, it is the law making a decision that he happens to disagree with). He says that his proposed law is to "protect parents' rights" (what about the kids' rights? Oh, of course, those kids can't vote!), and that he is using the notwithstanding clause to force it through in order to "provide clarity to parents" (the court's ruling was very clear: the law violates Canada's Charter of Rights and should be set aside). 

So, once again, a Conservative government is using the notwithstanding clause for a purpose the Charter's architects never envisaged (to force through legislation that is either illegal or unconstitutional or both), and they are doing it with barely a second glance. Maybe they should have envisaged this kind of thing back in 1982. But then, the 1980s was a very different (and much more innocent) time.

What actually is moral injury?

Increasingly, one hears about "moral injury" being experienced by soldiers, first responders, journalists, police officers, Indigenous people, and doctors and nurses (the latest example I happened to hear). But what exactly is moral injury? Is it a real thing, or just a trendy buzzword?

Well, yes, it's a real thing, but yes, to some extent, it's also a trendy buzzword, used a little too freely to make a dramatic point.

Moral injury has traditionally been used to describe the experiences of soldiers (and civilians) in wartime situations. It can be defined as damage to an individual's moral conscience, ethical codes or values, as a result of an act of perceived moral transgression (either on the part of the individual or of others around them). It causes profound feelings of guilt or shame, resulting in lasting emotional, psychological, social or spiritual distress, similar but different to post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).

Most commonly, it is mentioned in the context of war, where it might affect, for example, a soldier who has to kill civilians (either where there is no alternative, or accidentally), or who gives an order that results in the death of a fellow service member, or who follows orders that are either illegal or immoral, etc. 

More recently, though, it has become increasingly applied to the healthcare profession, particularly since the COVID-19 pandemic. Even before COVID, moral injury was being attributed to healthcare workers, as spending cuts ate into doctors' and nurses' ability to do their job to the best of their ability. Since then, though, things have only got worse, and standards of care have often fallen well below what workers would consider to be acceptable, resulting, it is argued, in moral injury every bit as real as that experienced by solders in battle.

Nurses and doctors in this situation may live with social withdrawal, substance abuse, and even suicidal ideation and self-destructive acts. Depression and other mental health problems are widely experienced in today's healthcare circles.

That said, moral injury is a rather woolly, poorly-defined concept, and it is easy to use it as a buzzword or a handy catch-phrase in a political context. Often, a more appropriate word may be "burnout", which is usually taken to mean a state of emotional, physical and mental exhaustion caused by excessive and prolonged stress. This too can cause physical symptoms like headaches, intestinal issues, fatigue and changes to appetite and sleep patterns, but it is not on the same scale as moral injury.

A little nuance in the matter of the Galicia Division

There's an interesting article in the Globe and Mail today that puts a little bit of nuance into the story about Canada's embarrassing faux pas in inviting a 98-year old surviving member of the 2nd World War Waffen-SS Galicia Division in Ukraine to appear in Parliament, and introducing him to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and the watching world as a "Ukrainian hero, a Canadian hero". The individual responsible for the invitation, House Speaker Anthony Rota, has since apologized for his egregious mistake and resigned, and will probably never hold his head up in polite society again. But the international blowback from the gaffe continues.

The 14th Waffen Grenadier Division of the SS (1st Galician) was set up in 1943 by Heinrich Himmler himself, and was made up mainly of Ukrainian military volunteers (Galicia is a historical name used for western parts of Ukraine). It changed its name to the 1st Division of the Ukrainian National Army when that was created in 1945, not long before it surrendered to British and US forces. That name change was probably part of the confusion over Yaroslav Hunka's status, although a bit of research should probably have made this clear.

There is no denying that the Galicia Division was a part of the Nazi armed forces, and it was established as essentially cannon fodder against the advancing Soviets, as the Nazi war machine was faltering in the region. It was headed up by Nazi SS commander Fritz Freitag, and was run by officers trained in Nazi ideology. Recruits would have sworn allegiance to Hitler and given the Nazi salute.

But this also misses some of the geopolitical context of the time and place. As Hunka himself wrote in a 2001 essay for an American online magazine, Ukrainians were reeling after years of repressive Polish occupation, followed by 18 months of brutal Soviet rule. Many Ukrainians welcomed the invading Germans as a possible way of fighting back at what they saw as the dominant yoke of Soviet Russia, out of a desire to "protect" their Ukrainian homeland. They saw it as a step towards Ukrainian independence after years of foreign occupation, and most were not motivated by antisemitic ideology or even support for the Third Reich. Indeed, many of them were bitterly disappointed when - surprise, surprise! - the Nazis turned out to be just as brutal as the Soviets, and proceeded to dismantle the provisional Ukrainian government and imprison its leaders.

It maybe hard for us to believe, in retrospect, the naivety of these Galician Ukrainians. It's also hard to believe that Canada was persuaded to accept large numbers of the unit's soldiers ("several hundred", possibly as many as 2,000) in the 1950s. A Commission of Inquiry on War Criminals was established in 1986 to look into this particular chapter of Canadian history, but it ultimately concluded that there was no evidence that any of the Ukrainian veterans participated in war crimes (although it admitted that it was unable to access and investigate records kept in the Soviet Union). 

The Vienna Wiesenthal Institute for Holocaust Studies says the involvement in war crimes of the division as a whole is still disputed and "under prosecutorial investigation in Poland". Others maintain that the unit's history has been gradually reconstructed over the years to minimize its links to the Nazis, and deny that all of its members were freedom fighters with no involvement in war crimes, atrocities and Jew-hunting.

Long after the war, in the 1970s and 1980s, Soviet agents in the West worked to portray the Ukrainian veterans as Nazi sympathizers, largely to sow division between those Jews and Ukrainians striving for independence for Ukraine. At the same time, members of the Ukrainian community in Canada worked to rehabilitate the reputation of members of the Galicia Division as war heroes. Muddy waters became still muddier. 

The unit still sparks polarizing reactions - war heroes or collaborators? - and the historical background remains murky. None of this, of course, excuses Mr. Rota and his actions (although, to be fair, even Zelenskyy and his wife did not seem to know anything about Hunka, and gamely joined in the applause). Any connection, however tenuous, to the Nazis, and even the mention of "fighting the Soviets" - who at that point were on the side of the Allies - should have been a huge red flag. But it's interesting how much nuance can be found if you look for it.

How a whole political career can be upended in minutes

Oh, how the mighty - and the merely competent - are fallen!

House Speaker Anthony Rota has resigned in response to his unfortunate (even if accidental) error in inviting an ex-SS Ukrainian soldier to the Canadian government's love-in with Ukrainian President Volodymir Zelenskyy, and leading the whole assembly in a standing ovation for the frail 98-year old in full view of TV cameras and international press coverage.

It will be hard for Canada to claw its way back from a public relations faux pas of this magnitude, and Rota had no alternative but to resign amid heartfelt apologies to all concerned. It was, as Rota has made clear from the outset, all his own personal mistake - the Speaker of the House is functionally independent and has a good measure of autonomy in these matters - and, in theory at least, it should not cast shade over the Liberal government as a whole, or over Prime Minster Trudeau specifically, however much Poilievre and the Conservatives try to spin it (Poilievre knows perfectly well that it is not Trudeau's job to check up on the Speaker's every action, but he is happy to pretend otherwise if he sees a stick to beat Trudeau with).

The only reason Rota invited Yaroslav Hunka was because Hunka's son, a constituent of Mr. Rota's riding, requested it. No-one really knew who the guy was, including, it might be pointed out, President Zelenskyy himself and his wife, who gamely joined in the general applause and smiled widely.

But it was undeniably a Bad Thing, and Rota had to go. It has compromised the whole government, insulted the Jewish and Eastern European community, and potentially handed Russia a propaganda victory in its attempt to paint its "special operation" as a crusade to "de-nazify" Ukraine (although it has been a long time since Putin has relied on that particular mistruth to justify his invasion). There's no coming back from that.

What's interesting, though, is how a single action and two sentences at the wrong time and in the wrong place can instantly negate a whole career, which up to now has been admirable, even exemplary. Rota is by all accounts "a profoundly good man", but he tried to do something nice for President Zelenskyy, failed to do his homework and his due diligence, and ended up disgracing himself and the country as a whole.

In the blink of an eye, Rota, 62, has seen his whole career destroyed. He was a former city councillor in North Bay, Ontario, served as a Liberal MP from 2004 to 2011, and was then re-elected in 2019 and 2021. He has served as Speaker of the House since 2019, and deftly guided Parliament through the hard times of the pandemic and the tricky institution of hybrid attendance. He was pretty much universally lauded as a good Speaker.

But no-one will remember any of that now. Henceforth, he will be remembered almost exclusively as the guy who threw Canada under the bus. It's a shame really.

Are sloths' days numbered?

Sloths - two-toed, three-toed, pygmy, any and all sloths - have always been among my favourite animals. Ever since I helped one across a busy road in Venezuela many years ago, and realized just how lightweight and vulnerable they really are, I have been smitten. I'm also impressed - and, frankly, shocked - at how something so apparently defenceless and exposed has managed to survive, virtually unchanged, for 64 million years. They move so slowly that algae and moss grow on them!

Now, of course, I know they are not actually defenceless. Those rapier-like claws can slash out faster than you might think, and are a prodigious defensive armament. And, if they only come down out of the trees to pee and poo once a week, their exposure to terrestrial predators is severely limited. (Incidentally, has anyone questioned why they come down at all? Can't they pee and poo from up above?) They are also masters of disguise and supremely camouflaged in their arboreal domain, as anyone who has tried looking for them can attest.

Now, though, it seems like sloths may finally be existentially threatened by - what else? - anthropogenic climate change. Sloth population studies are finding reduced numbers in recent years, and it seems the main culprit may be the prolonged periods of extreme heat interspersed with unaccustomed periods of extreme cold being experienced in the sloths' native habitat in Central America and northern South America. 

The microbes in the sloths' stomachs that help digest their diet of tree leaves - and remember, it can take a sloth's ultra-slow metabolism a whole month to digest a single leaf! - may be dying off during the cold spells. So, although the sloths may be eating and looking well, they are not actually digesting their food properly, and consequently are getting weaker and weaker, and ultimately dying.

This research is still in its infancy. But things are not looking so rosy for the poor sloth.

Do Sikhs really want an independent Kalistan?

I have already made my thoughts known about the assassination of Canadian Sikh separatist Hardeep Singh Nijjar on Canadian soil, back in June 2023.

What's not entirely clear to me is to what extent the movement for an independent Sikh homeland called Khalistan is a real movement, espoused by a majority of Sikhs. I'm told that, if you ask most Sikhs in India for their views, you will probably be met by a sideways glance and a dismissive comment that Khalistan is an idea invented by the Sikh diaspora in countries like Canada, and that Sikhs living in India are not concerned with the idea.

Is this true? Certainly, in recent years, most of the noise about Khalistan has come from outside the country. Khalistan independence had its heyday in India back in the 1970s and 1980s. After the brutal storming of the Golden Temple in Amritsar, the holiest place in Sikhism, in 1984, which resulted in hundreds dead, and the anti-Sikh pogroms following the assassination of Indira Ghandi, which left thousands of Sikhs dead, the movement in India went, understandably, very quiet. 

Many Sikhs left India at that point, settling in accommodating countries like Canada, and some of those carried with them the dream of an independent Sikh homeland in the Punjab region of India (although many others wanted nothing more to do with it). In the meantime, Sikhs living in India appeared to join the mainstream of Indian (i.e. Hindu) life. Some of them did quite well for themselves, with some reaching the peaks of the legal profession, the armed forces, even politics.

So, ask a typical Sikh on the streets of New Delhi, and you will probably hear that Sikhs just want the status quo, and that talk of Khalistan is the work of rabble-rousers and malcontents overseas. Certainly, the Indian government is at pains to stress that there is no groundswell of public support for an independent Khalistan. But pry a little further and some will admit that many Sikhs do still hanker for their own land, but are just too scared and intimidated to speak of it inside India. 

The Indian anti-terror agency is feared, and many (alleged, I have to say here) extrajudicial killings and imprisonments have occurred over the years. Any Sikh that speaks out about Khalistan is labelled a terrorist and an "anti-national", much like Muslim dissenters in Kashmir. Just earlier this year, a Sikh preacher and separatist called Amritpal Singh mounted a series of protests in Punjab, but he was mercilessly hunted down and arrested by security forces, and he remains in a high-security jail to this day.

There is still a peaceful pro-independence group in Punjab called Dal Khalsa, which is allowed to persist, mainly as a sop to supporters, and proof to the world as a whole that India is a democratic country that allows political and religious dissent. But few Sikhs in India have any real hopes of achieving a Sikh homeland in India any time soon. Narendra Modi sees Hindu nationalism as a central plank of his regime, and he has millions of Hindus behind him.

Is Canada justified in accusing India of complicity in assassination?

I've been silent so far on the announcement of "credible allegations" of the involvement of Indian government agents in the mafia-style hit on a Canadian citizen in British Columbia earlier this summer. 

The victim, Hardeep Singh Nijjar, was an outspoken activist for Khalistan separatism (the movement for a Sikh homeland in the Punjab region of India), but not, as India maintains, a terrorist. In democratic, free-speech Canada, Nijjar was an awkward, inconvenient and somewhat noisy Canadian citizen with, nevertheless, every right to make his public case for a separatist movement overseas; in authoritarian, Hindu-nationalist India, he was considered a traitor and a terrorist for even thinking of carving off a piece of the sacred Hindu state of India for a benighted religious minority like Sikhism.

Prime Minister Trudeau made his shock announcement in Parliament, hours before it would have been leaked through the Globe and Mail newspaper (which, arguably, forced his hand in making an announcement that many felt was premature). Opposition politicians, of course, are howling for more details to be made public, although this is such a sensitive issue, over which an investigation is still ongoing, so why they would expect public details at this point I am not sure. 

Politicians do not publicly accuse a major world power of complicity in extra-territorial assassinations on a whim, or even on hearsay. The country's international reputation, foreign policy and domestic security is at stake here, not to mention the Prime Minster's own electoral fortunes. There would have to be some fire behind this smoke, even if it is not apparent yet.

For its part, India, predictably enough, has expressed its outrage, and expelled a Canadian diplomat - the least they could reasonably have done. Then, they doubled down, calling Canada a "safe haven" for terrorists, extremists and "anti-India behaviour", issuing a travel advisory for Indian tourists and students, and finally closing all visa operations in Canada due to unspecified "security threats".

It does seem, though, like Canada was tipped off by one of its Five Eyes allies (i.e. USA, UK, Australia or New Zealand), as the US ambassador to Canada freely admits. But it's no surprise that they too are keeping mum, partly due to the sensitive and ongoing nature of the investigation, but partly because no-one wants to unnecessarily upset the powerful and strategic trading nation that India now is. 

Ditto for most of Canada's other Western allies, none of whom wants to stick their necks out and risk alienating an important (and, crucially, non-Chinese) Asian trade partner. Some people, intent on scoring cheap political points - looking at you, Mr. Poilievre - are making much of Canada's apparent political isolation on this matter, but you can absolutely understand why other countries are loath to get involved at this early stage, when you just stop and think about it.

So, did Trudeau jump the gun? He was between a rock and a hard place; the story would have broken anyway, and it is better to control the narrative than appear poorly-informed. While some critics are saying that he should not have stirred the hornets' nest in this way, others are complaining that he hasn't gone far enough. So, what's a PM to do?

He did the right thing by dispatching top diplomats and security service personnel to India earlier this summer to try and find some answers, and even raising the matter privately with Modi at the G20 meeting earlier this month. Canada has called on India to cooperate with its investigations, an opportunity that India seems determined to avoid. The allegations were shared with the intelligence services of Canada's other close allies, and no-one seemed to advise Trudeau against making a public statement.

Are the allegations even credible? Well, yes. India is not a meek and mild undeveloped country these days, and under the hardline Hindu nationalist zealot Narendra Modi, who has already been complicit in violence and extra-legal activity against religious minorities like Muslims, Christians and Sikhs within India, such action is entirely believable and even in character.

Extrajudicial and extraterritorial assassinations of this sort are unprecedented in Canada. We are right to be incensed, whatever the circumstances. If the Indian government is indeed as innocent as it claims, then there is no reason for India not to help in the investigation. If it persists in blustering and denying involvement without any evidence, then we all need to worry.